Alternative Energy
by crackers4jenn
Summary: The obligatory Jeff-and-Annie continuation of the blanket fort collapse in episode 2.09.


A single blanket flutters down around Annie and Jeff, but does not fall completely. There are pillows and rigged broomsticks and couch cushions that keep it semi-propped up in tent form, though it sags in a half-collapsed state at all sides.

Somewhere close to Annie's right, Pierce starts shouting about terrorists while Shirley can be heard murmuring reassurances to herself. Annie does not move, does not breathe. Only stares at Jeff, and Jeff's mouth, and Jeff's awesomely attractive facial hair that makes him seem _so_ much more rugged and experienced-

"_Annie_," he whispers, all smiles and fun, friendly amusement, like _the conspiracy, man. It's still on_!

She grows hyper-aware of their closeness, feels her face flush. "Uh-hmm!" is the first thing to burst out of her, and she gives herself a quick mental kick for it. She tears her gaze away from his, starts to sit up because: _real platonic there, Annie_! She's practically invading his personal space, like some kind of... _cat_, or a personal space invader, or a... _second_ cat.

He puts his hand out to stop her. His fingers, she watches, wrap around her wrist, all the way around. Just for a second.

"Fluffy Town _just got interesting_," he blows out excitedly, eyes a'glow with what is probably delirium, since it HAS to be nearing midnight. With a jolt, she realizes that she's never really seen Jeff like this. Loose, unwound, not trying to look cool. Like he's actually enjoying himself and who cares who sees?

"THE TERRORISTS WIN," Pierce is suddenly shouting, in between horrible cries of pain. "My legs, my le-eeeh-eeegs," he old man-wheezes.

There is a muffled rustle of movement that catches both Jeff and Annie's attention, about fifteen feet in front of them.

"Pierce, I'm coming!" It's Britta. They can't see her through their fallen blanket, though it's one of those thin cotton blends perfect for the summer, but she's close enough that it makes a secret shot of thrill tingle up Annie's spine. It's kind of sexy, being _trapped_ under here with Jeff. Kind of cool.

"I wonder," Annie whispers, voice coming out light and playful and purposely conspiratorial, "how long it'll take to haul Pierce out of here in his condition."

"Hours," is Jeff's dry, deadly serious response. "At least. In fact, I might retract that and correctly guess DAYS instead."

They quiet and listen while Britta, like some kind of leather jacket-adorned St. Bernard, crawls her way through collapsed blankets and fallen mattresses until she reaches Pierce. By now, Shirley has grown calm under the realization that the demolition of Fluffy Town is not, in fact, God testing them with an end-of-days fort apocalypse, and together her and Britta labor to drag Pierce out from beneath the fabric-y ruins.

"A little help, someone," Britta grunts, and through the thin sheet surrounding Jeff and Annie, she can be seen as a moving, struggling shadow with what looks like an enlarged attached tumor. That is Pierce, who moans and complains of mishandling the whole way.

"I'm suing!" he shouts at no one in particular, and everyone. "Jeff! Where's Jeffrey? Jeeeeeeeff. I'm suing, you hear me, Greendale?"

Shirley is heard cooing and offering up soothing words. She is a sudden shadow that zips across the blanket to follow after the Britta-and-Pierce blob, and then they're gone.

"We should probably..." Annie starts to say, then trails off with a wide-eyed look that implies: _we're awful friends to just sit in here and eavesdrop, aren't we?_ It also has a touch of _please, please, please want to stay._

"Help?" When Annie nods, Jeff scoffs. "As a victim of pretend gun violence, I'm invoking my given right to mooch off the system, hail Michael Moore as the genius that he's not, and fail a friend."

Annie laughs a little, stupidly happy, while Jeff dips toward her shoulder. In this more dimly lit space, his face is draped in darkness. She feels her heart start to slam around, thinking, not for the first time that night, and not for the first time regarding Jeff: _maybe_. Just that. Just a steady, hopeful stream of _maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe_ that twirls around inside her head like this wind-swept swirl of words.

But Jeff just blows out a rough breath. "Ugh. It's the longest day of Greendale everrrr."

"Yeah, well." Kind of saucily, she reminds him, "Night class was all _your_ idea, bucko."

"You _deceived_ me into it! And did you really just say the word 'bucko'?"

Annie straightens as much as the space allows, so that she actually rises a few inches above Jeff. It puts them at a level of her chest to his face, but she doesn't have time to even think about that, too busy defending herself with, "It was the _Dean's_ idea first! I just went along with it because you're like a lost ship at sea, just coasting by on academic aloofness."

"Annie," he says. Her name rumbles out both affectionately and full of bemusement, like: look what little specimen of school-enthused nerd we have here! "To coast is to excel."

"Sure," she easily concedes. "At _failure_."

"You really care about this, don't you?" He seems surprised, and that embarrasses her.

"Well. _Yeah_. School is important, Jeff," she deflects, not quite looking at him.

"I'd argue that, going off-script? Occasionally more important. _Bucko_."

Her eyes jump back over to his. Is she reading way too much into things, or is Jeff... _flirting_?

He slumps backwards before she can decipher it, onto the beanbag they are both sort of sharing. Tiredly, he rubs his hand across his eyes.

"Do me a favor," he tells her. "Next time you feel like teaching me a lesson about teaching me lessons: don't."

Self-consciously, almost mechanically, Annie begins to relax too. Enough that when she leans back, it's Jeff's shoulder that she rests against. She stiffens when she realizes it, flashbacks of the first day of school, of summer, of the transfer dance-all of it hits her. Pats on the head. Awkward blow-offs. _Young flesh_. It seems like, she thinks, they are finally past all of that lingering, post-kiss uncomfortableness, and going back to that after finally making it out of the ugly side of rejection with their friendship still intact seems so impossible, so foolish, and like such a huge mistake, yet-

Annie lets herself sink into the solid, warm feel of him, deciding that, you know what? Maybe they can be the kind of friends who are openly, physically affectionate. Why not? She's not so naive and young anymore to think that every met look, every touch, every extra skip of the heart, has to _mean_ something.

She breathes out a sweet, humming, satisfied noise, lets the late hour and the exhaustion from an action-packed evening creep into her so that she feels bone-heavy. Inside her flats, she wriggles her toes and it makes her tights stretch and pull across her feet.

"You think," Jeff wonders, after a comfortable beat, "the Dean's really going to pen a book under the alias Dean Dangerous?" His voice is soft, lulling, like what she thinks he'd sound like half-asleep.

Annie yawns some and says at the same time, "I don't know." With her head tilted back to look at Jeff: "Seems sort of..."

"Massively misleading?"

"You'd really read it? Cover to cover?" she teases.

"Uh, _Time Desk: The Adventures of Dean Dangerous_? Annie, not only would I read that, I'd Christmas gift the crap out of it." He lolls his head her way, so that she's left staring at his mouth again. "By the way? _You're welcome_."

"I'm _Jewish_."

"Awesome. Even better. Cross-religion. The gift within a gift."

She's smiling and thinking how nice it is to be back to normal, to this _new normal_, when their private little bubble suddenly whooshes up from above them. Two beams of light hit Annie and Jeff square in the face, and reflexively they both duck behind the cover of their hands and glare.

It's Abed and Troy.

"Jeff. Annie. We thought you were goners."

"Not me," Troy makes sure to point out. "I told everyone, loudly and on repeat, that if anyone could survive a horrifying but necessary mass blanket collapse-" His eyes go narrow with respect and truth, and he breathes out, "_It's Jeff Winger_."

Abed nods. Then, "How come you're still here? Were you waiting for the inevitable rescue scenario?"

"Sorry for the delay, but you would NOT believe the hassle Leonard put us through."

Abed grows a little more solemn at this. "Yeah."

"He _bit_ my shoulder."

"Things turned real ugly, real fast."

All of a sudden, Britta comes breezing around the hall corner, head turned and thumb pointed back towards the library. "-really can't believe they're not in, _oh heeeeeey_," she smoothly segues upon first actual glimpse of Annie and Jeff. Who, yeah. Are still piled next to each other on the ground. From exhaustion, people! Britta gets a smug, knowing look about her. "So. You two've been _here_ playing cutesy campers this _whole_ time? Well, isn't _that_ an adorable revelation."

It's all aimed at Jeff, Annie notices, and while nothing about is overtly rude, there's an accusation and condescension in there hard to miss.

With his eyes locked on Britta, Jeff calls out a decisive, "Abed. Rig us back up."

Abed springs into action. "Can do," he says, and neatly, expertly shakes out the blanket so that it starts to fall around Annie and Jeff again.

"So cool," Troy exhales his appreciation. "Aw. Blanket fort. I wanna do it again."

Britta's wide, alarmed eyes are the last thing Annie sees before the sheets settle in tent-form once more on either side of them.

"Seriously?" they hear her complain. "This is exclusionism!"

"Tell that to Professor Professorson!" Jeff shoots back, from the hallow insides of their fort.

There's disdain-filled mutterings and _I have better things to do than hang out in a toddler-sized blanket fort, thank you very un-much_, and then the sound of Britta's heeled boots stomping off down the hall.

"So, Jeff," Abed brings up. "Fluffy Town. Would you call it more of a rousing success, or a blazing inferno of failure? Critically speaking."

Jeff's staring at Annie, though, with a we-just-beat-the-system smile, all inside jokes and _DEAN DANGEROUS, ANNIE, THIS IS SOMETHING STILL HAPPENING_! Annie returns it, feeling goofy. Hard to believe that just hours ago her brain space was dioramas and the hope for a better tomorrow. Even harder to believe that the last one seems so suddenly possible.

"Hel-lo?" wonders Abed, when he gets no answer. "Anyone in there?"

"MAYBE," Troy considers, "they're _dead_?" The last part is a whispered sound of horror.

"Couldn't be. We just saw them six seconds ago and they were still alive. Also, it's a fort of blankets."

"MAYBE," Troy reconsiders, "they've been _beamed up_ by a rival gang of UFOs lead by Star Burns!"

"Doesn't make any sense."

"MAYBE," Troy goes on, "they're so quiet, because they are right now actually _doing it_?" That's a high-pitched squeak.

Annie finally feels stirred into a response, the joy sucked out of the situation. "OH, GROSS!" she whines. "_TROY_!"

"ACTIVATE FLEEING SEQUENCE," Abed bellows. The two of them scurry off down the hall, robot noises and beat boxing heard the entire way until they turn a corner and disappear towards Abed's dorm room.

Even though, if we're being honest, the implication that things _could_ be getting _steamy_ under here makes Annie feel a little brazen and a lot empowered (_take that, crippling insecurities!_) she doesn't let the assumption bog her down like she's, what? Some kind of neurotic, over-analyzing freak? Who... is snuggled under a blanket (TENT!) with Jeff in a setting one might call CLASSICALLY ROMANTIC after a night of looks and shocking half-confessions and full-contact heroics-

_Oh._

Jeff's looking at Annie now, in that I-want-to-kiss-you way she's only seen on him once, right before the summer. And maybe it's Britta's words now that overlap the _maybe_'s in her head, mean and a little condescending, that make her forget all about _just friends_ and _I think you're kind of gross now_. She feels her heart all the way up her throat, her head goes fuzzy, sound becomes nothing but a roar of pulsing blood and the occasional signaling rustle of clothing that means Jeff is moving closer and closer.

The sound of footsteps snaps them out of it. The familiarly angry _click click click_ of heeled boots atop cheap flooring.

"Oh, don't mind me!" comes Britta's breezy voice. "I just forgot my _age_ and my _sense of right and wrong_."

Jeff backs off a little, sighs. His moral code, however poorly wired it usually is, seems to be clicking back into place.

Britta, still with a point to make, cheerfully reports, "They should be right beside my _CHRIS HANSEN._"

Annie imagines tiny toy soldiers inside of Jeff, drawing up some metaphorical drawbridge that locks her back out again, and instead of letting that happen, she throws herself at him. Like, literally. She becomes a solid mass of hurling movement, surprising Jeff for only a second before his willing hands wrap around the back of her head and they're kissing, and all those _maybe_'s dissolve.


End file.
